Album Reviews

Sweethead is Troy Van Leeuwen’s new project… you might know him better as one of the Queens Of The Stone Age. So whoever cooked up the idea of releasing his album around the same time as Them Crooked Vultures’ album, probably wasn’t thinking straight.

Backed up by the rhythm section of The Mark Lanegan Band and with Serrina Sims holding her own behind the mic armed with a sultry, seductive voice, Sweethead sounds really good on paper. Yet on their self-titled album they come off most of all as a non-inventive version of the Queens.

It’s sleazy, it’s got those hip-gyrating rhythms along with fuzzed up guitars yet somehow it just doesn’t work. The real star of the album is Sims and her sexy voice. But even she would have to admit that they don’t come close to Spinnerette, another female-fronted band with a Homme connection who released a kickass album earlier this year.